woman who got pregnant after having sex with a male escort in a German hotel has failed in a legal battle to find out his name.

The hotel where they spent three nights in 2010, in the German city of Halle, does not have to tell her the man’s name, a court in Munich ruled.

The man’s right to privacy outweighed the woman’s claim for child support payments from him, the ruling said.

She knew him as “Michael”. But three other Michaels were also at the hotel.

Each of the four Michaels had a right to “control their own data and protect their own marriage and family”, the ruling said.

The case was heard in Munich because the hotel chain is based in the Bavarian city. Halle is in eastern Germany.

The woman – not named in the case – said she got pregnant after staying with “Michael” in a room on the second floor. She now has a seven-year-old son called Joel.

The court decided that her lack of detail about the man raised the risk of personal data “simply being released at random”.

“Nor is it certain that the Christian name is indeed the name of the man in question,” the court said.

German privacy laws are among the strictest in Europe. It is partly a legacy of history – under the Nazis and the then communist East German regime there was intrusive mass surveillance, with grievous human rights abuses.